I remember reading that book in my junior year of high school; it was one of my favorites we read that year. I got extra credit points for bringing in the scripture that Pearl’s name comes from.

It’s actually hard for me to find much nice to say about this book, having hated being forced to read it in high school. I certainly agree with Scot’s comments about the negative impact works like this have had on our impression of Puritans (impressions Hawthorne himself seems to have harbored, from what I can tell).
If I must find something “nice” to say about the work, I can certainly appreciate with honesty the bravery that it must have taken Hawthorne to write so honestly about sin and its effects to a culture that must have found this scandalous.

Ah, ha! Now you’ve added *The Scarlet Letter* to your annual reading of *The Old Man and the Sea.* You definitely like to read fiction. LOL

Have you tried Hawthorne’s short fiction? “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister’s Black Veil” are two really fascinating stories that also deal with the Puritans.

I love Hawthorne’s work. Unlike some of his contemporaries, especially Whitman and Emerson, Hawthorne appreciated the reality of personal sin. His description of the inner struggle over hidden sin is indeed brilliant.
Make sure to catch some of his short stories. The Celestial Railroad is one of my favorites.

Dave, I agree: magnificent insight into the conscience.

I read it as a fairly young person but its been many years. I related my own secret guilts (nothing more major than normal teen-age kids but guilt weighed heavily on me) to Dimmesdale’s torment. I really identified with the desire to punish oneself in secret enough to make up for ones sins but realized that there is an element of pride in that – no matter how much he felt he had suffered in private, Dimmesdale never publicly confessed. In this, Hester and Pearl were in a sense stronger and truer people. I suppose this is a longer way of saying hypocrite. I concluded that I did not want to live such a life. Better to be Hester in public than Dimmesdale in private.

Scot,
You are right about the Puritans. A comparison of them and their current offspring in the American Northeast would be interesting though.
I too commend both Young Goodman Brown and the Celestial Railroad.
The later underlies Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics, an excellent book on Americans who have fought the notion that our brains, our brawn our technology or our money will save us. Without directly engaging any of the current issues of Global Climate Change, End of Oil, Environemnt, etc. he spoke richly of “limits,” in the 1980s, an age where we imagined we could do anything we pleased.
Peace,
Randy Gabrielse

Scot,
I have a Thoreau quote that might help you maintain your motto:
“Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even, is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.”
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

The Puritans deserve more credit than the epithets named to them, both European and American. Reading Owen, Baxter, Edwards et al requires some modern filtering lenses, but nonetheless one will find oneself mining riches therein.

Over Thanksgiving, my twin nieces came to stay. Named Sarah and Angela they are identical twins. In order to help us tell them apart, I suggested that Sarah wear a sweatshirt with a big red “S” and Angela wear one with a big red “A.” Didn’t work.